


bury me with nothing but my own skin

by WISHBONE



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:45:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9799235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WISHBONE/pseuds/WISHBONE
Summary: Shiro feels the weight of each of his scars.Keith reminds him that he doesn't have to carry them alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work was entirely, _entirely_ inspired by [this](http://rero-pumpkin.tumblr.com/post/157201731088/sheith-care-and-comfort) absolutely stunning artwork by rero-pumpkin.  
>  It's probably best you go look at it first before you read this!

It’s not -  
It’s not that Shiro’s vain. The scars are ugly, yes - horrible - but he could probably have lived with that.

It’s that they’re so much _more_.

Every mark a tangible reminder of both the pain he has suffered or the pain he has wrought.

The one across his face was the first, from moments after they were captured. Before Shiro had truly understood just what was happening, when he’d still had hope. He’d lost count of how many times he cried _“Please, we come in peace,”_ before a Galran guard had lost patience and slapped him across his face. One of its claws had caught his skin and ripped open his face. On the bridge of his nose the cut was so deep that it had exposed the bone. There’d been so much blood, the front of his chest soaked with it. Matt’s face above him pale as the moon as he tried to stem the bleeding. An inch higher and Shiro would have lost both his eyes.

Shiro’s fists clench against his will and that’s worse, so much worse, because tensed like this he can feel the scar tissue across the knuckles of his left hand, the ache where one break hasn’t quite healed right. Can picture so vividly the bloodied pulp that was all that was left of the face of his fifth or fiftieth opponent in the ring, when something deep and dark within him had finally come loose and all the fear and all the anger had poured out through his fists so that he couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop punching despite the crunch of bone under his hand, the limpness of the body under his. Didn’t stop until they’d dragged him off and thrown him in a cage like an animal.

Worse still, is that he feels nothing like that in his right arm, the Galra tech gleaming and perfect and deadly. Fit for a champion.

Shiro closes his eyes because he has to, can feel the bile rising at the back of his throat, but the murkiness there is almost the exact shade that the stain of alien blood makes in the sand of a gladiator field, half congealed and glistening and-  
Shiro's eyes fly open with a gasp, despair making his throat close, the air seem thin. He looks at himself and thinks, _this will never end._

A movement in the corner of the mirror catches his eye and panic wells inside him, cold and terrible because it’s Keith, walking closer, the deep plum of his eyes like a physical touch where they trace the scars on his back.

Logically, Shiro knows that Keith has seen the scars. When he’d awoken in the shack after his return to earth he had been dressed in old Garrison sweats, the Galran slave-wear nowhere to be seen and Keith asleep on the floor beside the bed, curled like a parenthesis towards him.

This though is the first time Shiro’s had to endure being conscious while Keith has looked upon him, not in the least because he has been actively avoiding this very situation, despite the hurt in Keith’s eyes each time he notices and Shiro’s own pain at causing it.

It’s just that Keith is beautiful to Shiro, always has been, and Shiro can’t stand the thought of letting him touch this, this ugliness, this evidence of pain and bile, evil and base survival instinct. This stripping of humanity, flayed open like a carcass.

Shiro makes an abortive move to grab for his shirt but Keith’s voice is like steel when it rings across the room.

“Don’t. Don’t hide it from me,” and then softer, “please.”

Keith walks closer, each step steady and deliberate, intent heavy in his eyes. Shiro’s mind flashes with terrible visions of his scars up and moving at Keith’s first touch on his skin, crawling like leeches from Shiro’s skin to Keith’s, contaminating him with all the same hurts and horrors. When he see’s Keith’s arm first raise in the reflection of the mirror he cannot help but flinch.

Keith notices - of course he notices - but he doesn’t stop, only slows his arm’s ascent and begins to whisper soothing sounds, his breath like a tide across the shell of Shiro’s ear. Keith whispers, “I’m not going to hurt you,” and Shiro wants to protest that that’s not what he’s afraid of, it’s not, until he realises that actually, a part of him is, is shaking with it.

When Keith’s fingers finally land on the plane of his shoulder, gentle like he’s touching something infinitely precious, tender like he’s touching something infinitely loved, Shiro’s knees almost give in. He cannot help the flicker of his eyelids, the rush of his exhale.

Keith’s left hand rises to his other shoulder, the grip firmer, more frantic, while his forehead falls to the nape of Shiro’s neck, pressed there like a prayer. Shiro watches all his scars in the mirror, watches them still and unmoving and feels relief like rain in a desert.

When Keith’s hand begins to trace down his right shoulder Shiro watches with bated breath as it nears the seam of his prosthetic, almost dizzy with a heady mix of abject fear and desperate longing. Just when it threatens to overwhelm him Keith raises his head and begins to speak again, his eyes locked unerringly with Shiro’s in the mirror.

“It’s been a year since I last touched you like this,” he murmurs, voice low and warm at Shiro’s ear, “a year and every day without you felt like its own little death. I thought-” Keith’s voice breaks and Shiro feels a part of him crumble with it, “Shiro, I thought you were dead. Did you really think that something like this could change anything about the way I feel about you?”

Keith exhales all in a rush and Shiro sees that his hand is shaking where it hovers above his prosthetic. Keith hesitates there, frozen at an invisible precipice, before seeming to come to an abrupt decision. In the next instant, his hand is gone. Before Shiro’s can even begin to panic or feel his heart sink, it is replaced with Keith’s lips, light like the brush of silk where they kiss the heated seam of gnarled scar tissue and smooth metal.

Shiro’s cities crumble. His rivers flood. His dam overflows. A single word grinds its way out of the wreckage.

_“Keith.”_

Shiro grabs blindly for Keith’s hand, and it’s his prosthetic which finds it but in that moment, there is nothing inside of him which could care. He swings around to face Keith, Keith who is as familiar and as wondrous as the stars which surround them, and gives in to the desperate, almost blinding urge to kiss him.

When their lips meet, Keith makes a sound like a gunshot. “Shiro,” he says, “Shiro.”

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Cradle by Anis Mojgani.
> 
> as ever all comments and criticisms are most appreciated! you can also find me on [tumblr.](https://kogains.tumblr.com)


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